Getting from there to here.

When last we met, best I can recall, it was Wednesday. My absence, in theory, has made your hearts grow fonder. Of what, is unclear. In any case, it has been an interesting couple of days since.

Thursday night, after one of the best days of the year weather-wise during which I enjoyed the outdoors” a whole buncha lotta” (copyright Joan Kelly, somewhere in the Sixties) because I had met one deadline on Wednesday and the other now off until Monday, I joined America in watching American Beer Blogger, taping it as a I did so. Then I watched the tape over and over again until early Friday morning, looking for the secret message I was sure it contained. All that got me was confirmation of the major typographical error which broke my concentration the first time around, but that’s something. Lew done good overall, playing a quieter, more laid-back Bryson, sans the iconic laugh/terribly annoying sound that marks the real Lew’s presence every 3.75 minutes. Who knew he could do that? The boy may have a future.

Yesterday, after a morning at the Beer Yard, about the office of which I will say only that Buddy the Dog-Thing got out of the car, took a leak, looked around and begged to be put back into the car rather than going into that disaster area. Someday I expect–no, that’s too strong, make it “assume”–that I will cross paths with fine proprietor Matt Guyer when I am there. I’m pretty sure I will recognize him.

On the way home, I ran into Tom Foley (if you have to ask Who ‘dat? you are just not paying attention) and joined him at the Railroad Street Bar & Grill for a brew. This place, hidden in away in wishes-it-could-be-bucolic-but-that’s-not-happening Linfield, is now, I think, the closest establishment to my abode which has an appealing beer list (at worst, it is tied with Craft Ale House, which is good company to keep). I had a Stillwater Folklore and got to meet the new owner, Mike McCloskey. They have all sorts of things going on: they will, this Wednesday, be one of the first bars in the area to pour Goose Island beers and are working on a neat-sounding joint effort with other good beer venues out here in my bailiwick. Mike has promised to send me details. We shall see if that happens.

Beers I have had and enjoyed in the privacy and comfort of Liquid Diet World Headquarters these last three days have included Sly Fox Pughtown Porter (growler), which I also used to make a reduction of sorts, inspired by the above-mentioned Bryson TV show, to enhance a salmon filet and mushroom/sweet pepper/Basmati rice side dish (it weren’t bad); Leffe Blond, about which I assume no more need be said; Ridgeway Santa’s Butt, a winter porter from England which has gotten the Shelton Bros. in all sort of legal battles and which, while a bit sweet, is quite nice; Lavery Imperial Red Ale, unfiltered, 8.2% and my first ever beer from that Erie brewery, and a very good Imperial Stout from Denmark’s Amager Bryghus called Hr. Frederiksen, a complex and tasty 10.5% treat which I had but a small sampling of because, engrossed in the book I was reading, I reached without looking for the glass on the Utz’s Potato Chips tin next to my chair rather more forcefully than I should have and spilled the rest of the 22oz bottle all over the magazines and other books waiting for me to get to them. Very sad, for those publications and for me. This was a very nice beer.

Here the deponent resteth.

Note:The section of this post dealing with the Railroad Street Bar & Grill has been updated and clarified; one should never post late at night if one has been drinking and one has usually been drinking by late at night.

That dichotomy is one of the things I most liked, the muscular and heavily tattooed guy in a work shirt with the sleeves cut off drinking a Bud on one side of me, the beer geeks on the other. I was one of the appeals of the Dawson Street Pub back in the 90s. I’d go there around 5 a couple of days a week and the bar would be lined with with roofers and laborers and guys in suits and ties and riffraff like me. The only difference was, they did not/would not serve Bud. “No crap on tap” was the sign above the bar. One day a guy walked in and asked for Bud, then Miller, then Coors and, learning that he could not get any of those, looked around, suggested we all go perform a biological and physical impossibility and stormed out.